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From a band with Brian O' Connor on vocals and a list of guest musicians with names like Hank Shermann, Michael Denner, Andy LaRocque, Claudeous Creamer, Mike Wead, Glen Alvelais and Steve Smyth you expect something very good. On top of that, the album has been mixed and mastered with the help of Juan Arteaga, so nothing can't go wrong... After the first complete spin I was impressed by the aggressive guitar parts, the riffs, the shredding and the aggressive singing. Sometimes Brian uses a kind of Chuck Billy singing style besides his higher pitched singing. An example of that you can hear in "Ground and Pound". What this band serves is a mix of a heavy Vicious Rumors, some Testament elements, Armored Saint ("She's on Fire"), shredding guitars and a big portion of Iced Earth on top. So far so good, I hear you think, but for some reason the music misses something. A band like Vicious Rumors for example wrote very good songs that stick on their earlier albums, and that is a thing that's missing here. The musicianship is very good, but the songwriting has to improve for this to be a real hammer. Another big question mark can be put on some of the lyrics, in my opinion they are too patriotic and so simple that even Manowar would be ashamed of them, but who is interested in lyrics anyway... A very heavy album with top riffing, shredding, aggression, powerful vocals, groove, driving drums, but packed in songs that don't really stick. If they succeed in doing that and write a bit more intelligent lyrics, nothing will stop them next time... | ||||||||||||||||||
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